Tag: pasta

Chestnut and porcini ravioli

While browsing my ravioli pictures and recipes I found one I invented last year and that was just magnificent: chesnut and porcini ravioli. I love chesnut flour for its sweet taste and delicate flavor and I find it perfect to cook everything, bread, cake, crepes, pancake, crust for tarts or ravioli pasta. It is perfect with autumn veggies, prosciutto, parmegiano, melty cheese… I prepared porcini ravioli with a pasta made with chesnut flour. I simply replaced 3/4 of the regular flour by chestnut flour (more makes the dough hard to work). For the filling I used dried Italian porcini that I rehydrated, I chopped them and mix with a little of flour. You can add meat if you like too, or a bit of cheese. Then I filled the ravioli, boiled them and served with simply olive oil, salt and pepper. Super winner recipe that I really love! Of course if you have the chance to have fresh porcini I recommend to serve some too, just grilled in olive oil to top the ravioli! 

Now wondering what will be my next ravioli! 

Pasta dinner!

Recently I’ve been cooking Japanese a lot for dinner. For sure I love Japanese rice, but I also love pasta!!! So I come up with a little autumn recipe for some delicious fusilli: leek, tomato and kabocha, with a few cumin seeds and plenty of olive oil. A perfect dinner before my evening meeting with the other side of the world!!

I simply cut in small pieces all the veggies, cook them in a bit of oil then under cover until golden add generously pepper and cumin seeds. Boil the pasta, and serve together.

Sunny Japanese autumn – 秋晴れ

I love these autumn days when the skies are so blue and the light is so bright, these “akibare” days. This is an invitation to wake up early and be outside all day long . So I spend little time cooking during the day and we need some quick fix for lunch, yet full of energy to enjoy a few more other hours out gardening, hiking, playing tennis or whatever. Pasta provide a perfect base, and since temperature are still warm if not hot at this time of the day, acold salad is perfect: penne with avocado, radish, cucumber, sesame seeds and sunflower seeds, olive oil and ready!

Enjoy the autumn! It’s so beautiful outside! 

Basil and tomato ravioli

The basil in the garden seems to enjoy very much the rainy weather and it’s growing gigantic, so I went to cut some and was thinking about preparing a simple dish of pasta with basil and tomato. But then it turned out in a new ravioli recipe! 

I peeled a large tomato (you’ll actually need 2 or 3) and then cooked in a pan with a tiny bit of olive oil and some salt, until I obtained something close to condensed tomato. While the tomato was getting ready I prepared my usual dough recipe (100g of flour, 1 egg, a bit of salt and olive oil) and washed the basil and chopped it, and added it to the dough. This why I didn’t add water in the dough, the moist came mainly from the basil. I knead well and then pass it in my pasta machine untill it was thin enough (7 on my machine). I prepared two versions one with plain tomato for my husband, and one parmegiano-tomato for me.  I have some delicious vintage parmegiano brough from Italy, so I gratted some and mixed it with the tomato sauce. On the dough I lined a little quantity of filling, then lay an other layer of dough. And then made the ravioli. I am not very well equipped for making beautiful ravioli, so mine are pretty irregular. I just finally boiled them in salted and oiled water and served them with a little of olive oil. Super delicious. I was really surprised by how much we can appreciate the taste of the three ingredients: basil, tomato, parmegiano in my ravioli, a perfect balance that is usually not so easy to obtain with just tomato-basil pasta.

Ultimate simplicity

There are evenings when I don’t really have time to cook because I’m late from work or workout and I’m starving. Inicidently these evenings would coincide with a rather empty fridge (for some standards my fridge is always empty!). When this happens I need to fix dinner in less then 10min and I need carbs (no carb diet is definitely not for me). 10min is just the time it takes to boil some trofie, dice two large, super rippen fresh tomatoes, go outside to cut some fresh basil, seat back and snack a little cucumber. 

This ultimate simplicity seasonned with a delicious olive oil, for instance from my hometown in France, Camargue salt and grind pepper is just the perfect dinner! 

Pasta is just wonderful! 

Summer?

I talk about summer vegetables and fruits a lot, and use many in my cooking every day (I love summer fruits for breakfast) but to tell you the truth though we are in July, the weather is quite tricky these days and summer may be in my plates but not outside. So after a whole week of rainy days and quite cool evenings, I wanted to eat a warm soup. So I went for a simple combination: leek, celery and zucchini in a vegetable consommé that I cooked 10min to keep the celery and the zucchini firm enough. I added a few little pasta at the same time (for the energy after a tough day) and a bit of olive oil. A delicious mix for dinner perfectly balanced in taste and texture. You can also add some gratted Parmegianno. 

Farro penne salada

Recently there’s been a lot of green beans and broad beans, it is just the pick season here in Japan and I can’t resist buying some several times a week, so our dinner have been based on these greens quite often. Recently I also found okra from Okinawa (usually they come from the Philippines), but not yet local okra. I find the one from Okinawa particularly delicious. It’s funny because I never ate okra before coming to Japan, at first I found it was a strange vegetable, but little by little I started to really enjoy them. When eaten raw they are a bit slimy which might be discussing for some people, but as soon as you boil them for a few seconds they’re not slimy anymore and they keep this beautiful intense green color.
This time I prepared for dinner a farro penne salada. I boiled  the pasta al-dente, and boil the broad beans and green beans together, in the last 30seconds I just added the okra.
I served that with olive oil, salt and pepper, as usual, and added some wild smoked salmon (I don’t why I mention “wild”, because I only eat wild fish from specific areas, like all the vegetables I use are either organic or locally grown without chemicals).
And dinner was ready in less than 15min! Perfect after a long day at work!

Trofie

A few years ago while traveling to Milan I was shopping ｃooking ingredients and gears to bring back to Japan with me to extend my Italian experience. I may be French in Japan, Italian cuisine is, I think, what I love best. Useless to say that I came back with about a full suitcase of pasta, rice, semolina, dry porcini, olive oil and other magic ingredients. So during this Milanese grocery shopping spree I discovered Trofie. This rolled little pasta is just so good that it has been our favorite since then. I haven’t try yet to make my own, but I soon will for sure. In the mean time dry trofie are my favorite pick for a rapid fix, and they suit very well any time of pesto sauce or vegetables based sauce, or just with olive oil and salt and pepper it’s also perfect. I usually use Barilla trofie Liguri http://www.barilla.it/prodotto-barilla/trofie-liguri, and luckily recently trofie can be found in any good grocery stores worldwide, and Japan is no exception! 

This time I just cut a small zucchini and half of a yellow sweet pepper that I cook a few minutes in a pan and finish with some delicious olive oil. That’s all it takes to prepare a delicious and colorful plate.

Sardine and spicy tomato pasta

This week, just back from the US, has been quite crazy at work and since we haven’t been to the country our stock of fresh veg has turned short quickly, and we’ve eaten a lot of avocado, baby leaves salad, fresh sprouts and tomatoes. Recently also I wasn’t cooking pasta or risotto too much, but I must admit that I shut down a bit on cooking the last few days, and focused on simple dishes. So we’ve been eating pasta a few times! Pasta, like risotto and quiche are an amazing source of imaginative dinners, while being always different, you can make any variations and never eat twice the same thing.  This time I prepared spaghetti with a slightly spicy tomato sauce and sardines. In Japan it is really easy to find good fish, and already “prepared”: 刺身用 for sashimi. Which means no fishbone, no skin, perfect cut, 100% edible, and for me something quite crucial to eat fish: no head, nor fish shape!! Depending on seasons and locations you can find different varieties of fishes, this time I found nice sardines. I prepared a tomato sauce with tomatoes, olive oil, oregano and a little of Japanese 7 spices, then grilled the sardines, and topped the spaghetti.

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